Ladies and Gentlemen

Gah! I am so excited and I don’t even know where to start! I just won NaNoWrimo again this year! This book isn’t even done yet and I’m at 50,389 words! The word count will continue to climb. I had considered publishing this piece on my blog, but as the story has grown, I have realized I have a very publishable piece of young adult fiction that I am going to try to get an agent lined up to look at.

This story came out of a dream I had after my Reilly passed away this summer. The story has simmered in my mind for months. It is the last thing that Reilly and I did together. It’s so personal for me, and I think that’s why I have so much confidence in it.

It comes from my heart.

Reilly was my best friend, my confidant. He saw me through so much of the hard stuff in my life and honestly, I lost him far too soon. I have Lucy and Mugen now, but Reilly will always have a place with me, with his head butting gently into my armpit every time I write anything. I will always feel him here with me when I do it because he gave me the strength to do it last year. This year, he was my inspiration. He was the source of this book. He was its genesis. I am going to post a sample chapter here for people to read in PDF format. This is not a story that was written of the adult audience, so please keep that in mind. I wrote it, with the thought that my best friend could read this piece to her two little girls. I would love for her to have a copy of this book to read to them. I would love every parent who has young children to be able to read this story to their kids.

I have another 50,000 words or so to go before this piece is actually finished. I know that I will be pleased with the outcome. I have every confidence in that and I wanted to share with you my moment of victory. There is nothing that has happened in the last year that compares to the idea that finally, I have done something that I can do something with. I have written something and I wrote it for me, but I was finally able to keep a reader in mind.

I have people to thank. Lots.

Trudee, Sarah, John, Cathy and everyone else who posted on my facebook page that they liked my status as I updated my word count. I would love to thank Samantha and Dana, the municipal liaisons for Spokane for pushing me to write a whole bunch of crap during word wars that allowed me to keep writing the real story. I would like to thank the office of letters and light for putting on NaNoWriMo every year on a shoestring budget. I want to thank Mugen and Lucy for quietly sleeping at my feet and for driving me insane and keeping me on task while I have been writing this book. I am sure their continued support will be a boon to this novel before it is done.

I want to thank my followers on twitter, who cheered as I updated my word count status over and over again this month and @dbwildo for joking that his podcast might interfere with my ability to increase my word count. I managed to push out another 4,000 words that day with his quip in my mind as motivation to keep moving forward, no matter what the distraction.

Most of all though, I would like to thank my family who sat quietly in the other room and allowed me to slam 50,000 words (Actually, 50,935 as of this moment) out of my brain in 24 days. I love you guys so much. I can’t say enough about what your quiet support has meant for me. Now, if you can, just stick with me a little bit longer until I get this done and it’s ready to shop around.

I also came away with a really great piece of short fiction that is about 12,000 words in length that I will be editing in December and posting on my blog for you to read. It is nothing like my novel and is heavily borrowed from every bad zombie flick I have ever seen, but I think it’s a fun piece with a thought provoking side note or two that will be entertaining for everyone. I haven’t produced any new short fiction in a long time, and I think this piece will be a welcome sight for those of you who have been casually waiting for me to do something different.

This book is far from over, and NaNoWriMo isn’t done yet. I intend to keep writing as long as there’s November left in November and even afterwards because this is a story that I need to tell. I have to tell it.

Maybe that’s what I really needed, a story that I couldn’t go on through life without sharing.

There’s an app on the internet called “Write or Die”, it’s cute and its motivating and fun. But when it comes to our art, sometimes it is the truth. We must do what we do, otherwise, how are we to live?

Thanks everyone. SpokaneWriMos, I’ll see you next November and next year, my goal is to break 50,000 words before anyone else does. So you’d better watch out.